Family Friendly

Family Friendly

A Wide Variety of Animated and Live Action Movies Compete for Best Family Movie at 22nd Annual Faith & Values Awards

Hollywood, Calif. – Family and child advocate Dr. Ted Baehr, founder of Movieguide®: The Family Guide to Movies and the Christian Film & Television Commission®, announced a wide variety of animated and live action movies competing for “Best Family Movie” of 2013 at the 22nd Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry on Feb. 7.

The “Teddy Bear” Awards, as they are affectionately called, will be held Friday, Feb. 7 at the Universal Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles near the heart of Hollywood.

Heading the list of nominees for the Best Family Movie of 2013 are such major blockbuster hits as “Frozen” from Walt Disney Pictures, “Despicable Me 2” from Universal Pictures, “Monsters University” and “Oz, the Great and Powerful” also from Disney, and “The Croods” from DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures, plus movies like “Black Nativity” from Fox Searchlight Pictures; “Grace Unplugged” from Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate Films; “Turbo” from DreamWorks and Paramount; “Linsanity,” a small documentary about New York Knicks basketball star Jeremy Lin from Ketchup Entertainment; and, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

The domestic box office totals for these “Ten Best 2013 Movies for Families” range from $367.7 million for “Despicable Me 2” to $2,480,260 for “Grace Unplugged,” for an average of at least $108.2 million per movie.

“Family movies usually do best at the box office,” Dr. Baehr said, noting that six of the movies made it into the Top 25 movies at the box office in both the United States and overseas.

At the Faith & Values Awards, Dr. Baehr will present highlights of Movieguide®’s 2014 Report to the Entertainment Industry, which shows Hollywood what kind of movies were most successful at the domestic and international box office as well as on home video in 2013.

Nominations for other awards will be announced soon, including the $100,000 Epiphany Prizes for Inspiring Movies & TV, the $50,000 Kairos Prizes for Spiritually Uplifting Screenplays by First-Time and Beginning Screenwriters, the $50,000 Chronos Prize for Most Inspiring Screenplay by Established Filmmakers, the $50,000 Friess Free Enterprise Prize, the Best 2013 Movie for Mature Audiences, the Grace Awards for Inspiring Performances in Movies & TV, and the Faith & Freedom Awards for Promoting Western or American Values.

The “Teddy Bear” Awards are supported by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Friess Family Foundation.

Dr. Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission® (CFTVC) ministry and director of its family guide to movies and entertainment, Movieguide® (www.movieguide.org). CFTVC and Movieguide® are an international non-profit ministry, advocacy group, and watchdog dedicated to “redeeming the values of the entertainment industry by influencing industry executives and by informing and equipping the public about the influence of the entertainment media.”

The John Templeton Foundation (www.templeton.org) serves as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality. The Foundation supports research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will. It encourages civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights. The Foundation’s vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton’s optimism about the possibility of acquiring “new spiritual information” and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. The Foundation’s motto, “How little we know, how eager to learn,” exemplifies its support for open-minded inquiry and its hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

As an act of love to God and man, the Friess Family Foundation supports causes ranging from providing immediate and ongoing help after natural disasters, and clean, safe water, to bringing Christian medical care to the underserved.